Richard spent much of his childhood at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale, under the tutelage of his uncle Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. He was involved in ongoing battles between different alliances of the House of Lancaster and the House of York factions during the last half of the 15th Century. At the time of the death of his father and older brother Edmund at the Battle of Wakefield, Richard was still a boy, and at that time he was taken into the care of Warwick, known to history as "The Kingmaker" because of his strong influence on the course of the Wars of the Roses. Warwick was instrumental in deposing Henry VI and replacing him with Richard's eldest brother, Edward. While Richard was at Warwick's estate, he developed a close friendship with Francis Lovell, a friendship that would remain strong for the rest of his life. Another child in the household was Warwick's daughter Anne Neville, whom Richard would later marry.

Following the decisive Yorkist victory over the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury, Richard married the widowed Anne Neville, younger daughter of the late Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick. Anne's first husband had been Edward of Westminster, son of Henry VI. Following his death at the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, she disappears from the records for a while, her whereabouts unknown. It is popularly believed that she had fallen under the control of George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, who had an interest in preventing her from marrying again, because it gave him full control over the joint inheritance of Anne and her elder sister Isabella Neville, Duchess of Clarence, George's wife. Richard is said to have found Anne working as a scullery maid in a London chophouse and "rescued" her;[citation needed] but the truth is not known. Their marriage took place on 12 July1472. However, because of the estates and lands at issue, it is far from clear that he actually loved her, although he was seen to have wept openly at her funeral in 1485, and there are no reports of open unhappiness in their marriage.

On the death of King Edward IV, on 9 April 1483, the late King's sons (Richard's young nephews), King Edward V, aged 12, and Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York, aged 9, were considered to be next in the order of succession. Appointed Lord Protector of the Realm in his brother's will, Richard was aware of a danger that the Woodvilles would isolate him and would use their influence over Edward V to consolidate their power at Richard's expense.

John Morton, Bishop of Ely and later Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VII, is considered by some to be an important source of the Tudor propaganda against Richard III. According to Sir Thomas More's History, which may be based in part on Morton's accounts, Lord Hastings (a regular visitor to the young Edward V in the Tower of London) was arrested for alleged treason on 13 June1483 at a meeting of the Royal Council, at the Tower. A few minutes later, he is said to have been beheaded on Tower Green, a clear violation of his rights (i.e., execution without due process) as a Peer guaranteed under Magna Carta. It has been argued that Hastings, whose execution was the first recorded at the Tower of London, was indeed arrested on 13 June, but later formally charged with treason, tried, convicted and sentenced, and legally executed on 18 June; no record of such proceedings survives. Edward's younger brother, Richard, was removed to the Tower on 16 June, with his mother's consent.

It is thought that Hastings had allied himself with the Queen Dowager because of the rise in influence of Buckingham and what he saw as Richard's usurpation of the throne. Morton claimed to have been in the council room when Hastings was arrested, and may have been one of several men who were detained for participating in the conspiracy with Hastings.

Three other members of the alleged conspiracy — the queen's brother Lord Rivers, her second son Richard Grey, and another chamberlain Sir Thomas Vaughan — were also convicted and executed elsewhere. Jane (or Elizabeth) Shore, who had been a mistress of King Edward IV, and then of his step-son Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, and was now Hastings's mistress, was convicted of only lesser offences and was made to do public penance and briefly imprisoned. Thomas Grey avoided prosecution in the conspiracy by going into sanctuary at Westminster with his mother.

John Morton is also thought to be the source of other accusations against Richard, notably

accusing Jane Shore and Elizabeth Woodville of witchcraft in withering his arm

being illegitimate himself

Each of these stories first appears in writing either in Sir Thomas More's The History of King Richard III, believed by some to be based on Morton's account, or on the writings of someone else who had heard the stories (Historians are divided on the issue of Morton's importance as a source, some pointing out that More's own father was an Edwardian loyalist and well-connected in the government of the City of London). The question of whether these stories were true was of great interest to neither Morton nor More, history at that time being regarded as a branch of literature. It was customary for histories to also serve as propaganda on both sides, to support and strengthen one's patron's cause. Not only that, but Morton, having been arrested by Richard III, had fled to exile in Flanders. He only returned when Henry VII was on the throne and was quickly promoted.

On June 22, 1483, outside St Paul's Cathedral, a statement was read out on behalf of Richard declaring for the first time that he was taking the throne for himself. When the members of Parliament met on June 25, it apparently heard evidence from the Bishop of Bath that he had conducted a marriage or betrothal between Edward IV and one Lady Eleanor Talbot (or Butler) before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. Since even a betrothal was a legally binding "pre-contract" in the customs of the time, Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been bigamous, therefore all their children were illegitimate. Some of the proceedings of that Parliamentary session survive in a document known as Titulus Regius, which Parliament issued some months later explaining its actions and of which a single copy escaped the destruction of all copies of the Titulus Regius later ordered by Henry VII. The identity of the priest in question—thought to have been Edward IV's sometime Chancellor, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells—is known from only one source, the French political commentator, Philippe de Commines. Titulus Regius also cited two further grounds upon which Edward IV's marriage had been invalid, namely that it was made "in a profane place" and that it was made "without the assent of the Lords".

Despite rumours that Richard's claims were true, evidence was lacking and it was generally accepted that Richard's principal motive for taking the crown was that he felt that his own power and wealth would be threatened under Edward V, who was presumably sympathetic to his Woodville relatives. However, a recently published theory asserts that Edward IV was illegitimate—see was Edward illegitimate? for details—but hard evidence is lacking.

The disinherited Edward V and his brother Richard, who had joined him in the Tower of London, were never seen again after the summer of 1483. According to chroniclers of the day, the two boys (known to history as "The Princes in the Tower") were already rumored to be dead by the end of 1483. Modern historians regard Richard III as the most likely culprit in the deaths of the princes, since they were under his care at the time of their disappearance and they presented a threat to his reign as long as they were alive, but the controversy continues to this day.

Richard was known as a devout man and an efficient administrator. However, he was a Yorkist and heirless and had removed the Woodvilles and their allies; he was therefore vulnerable to political opposition. His supporter Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham turned against him and was executed late in 1483 after joining with Henry Tudor in a failed attempt to overthrow Richard by force.

Richard's enemies united against him. According to local tradition in Leicester, Richard consulted a seer in the town before heading off for the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485 to meet Lancastrian forces led by Henry Tudor. The seer foretold that "where your spur should strike on the ride into battle, your head shall be broken on the return". On the ride into battle his spur struck the bridge stone of the Bow Bridge; afterward, as his dead body was being carried from the battle over the back of a horse, his head struck the same stone and was broken open. Henry Tudor succeeded Richard to become Henry VII, and cemented the succession by marrying the Yorkist heiress, Elizabeth of York. Legends notwithstanding, Richard was abandoned at Bosworth by Lord Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, Sir William Stanley, and Henry Percy, 4th Earl of Northumberland. The switching of sides by the Stanleys depleted severely the strength of Richard's army and had a material effect on the outcome of the battle. Even Tudor accounts note that Richard fought bravely and ably during the battle, unhorsing a well-known champion, killing Henry's standard bearer and nearly reaching Henry himself before being surrounded and killed.

It is said that Richard's naked body was paraded through the streets before being buried at Greyfriars Church, Leicester. According to one tradition, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries his body was thrown into the nearby River Soar, although other evidence suggests that this may not be the case and that his burial site may currently be under a car park in Leicester. There is currently a memorial plaque on the site of the Cathedral where he may have once been buried. Skeletal remains recovered from the Soar and initially believed to be Richard's were later found to be those of an Anglo-Saxon warrior who died nearly 500 years before Richard was killed. This conclusion was made through both radiocarbon dating and the size of the body and the thickness of the bones. Richard is described in contemporary accounts as being somewhat short and slim, conditions not matched by the bones.
The greater probability is that Richard's remains are still buried at the original site, whereas his tombstone has been destroyed (see link below).

At the time of his last stand against the Lancastrians, Richard was a widower without a legitimate son. After his son's death, he had initially named his nephew, Edward, Earl of Warwick, Clarence's young son and the nephew of Queen Anne Neville, as his heir. After Anne's death, however, Richard named another nephew, John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, as his heir.

Since his death, Richard III has become one of England's most controversial and maligned monarchs. Modern historians recognise the damage done to his reputation by historians of the following Tudor reigns and particularly by William Shakespeare. Among other distortions, Richard was represented as physically malformed, which in those days was accepted as evidence of an evil character. There is no real evidence for his having been hunchbacked, as has been popularly believed for centuries. X-rays of one of the standard portraits of Richard revealed that the larger shoulder, suggesting a hunchback, had been added later. However, in order to participate in three of the major battles of the Wars of the Roses, Richard would have been clad in up to 80 pounds (lbs) of plate armour: this would have been almost impossible if he had been hunchbacked. Alternatively, it is possible that, as with other sons of the nobility or seasoned soldiers, Richard had practised swordsmanship from a very early age and had developed a great deal of muscularity in one or both shoulders [1].

Richard's death at Bosworth, following the presumed death of the Princes in the Tower, ended the Plantagenet Dynasty, which had ruled England since the succession of Henry II in 1154. Lesser nobility among the Plantagenets were cast aside when the Tudors came to power, including the Aston family, one of whose descendants, John Lathrop, became an ancestor of many famous Americans. Another of their descendants was restored as Lord Aston of Forfar after the Tudors had been succeeded by the Stuarts. The last male Plantagenet, Edward, Earl of Warwick (son of Richard III's brother Clarence) was executed by Henry VII in 1499.

The Society of Friends of King Richard III was set up during the 20th century in order to rehabilitate Richard and to honour his memory. This society is based in the city of York, where following his death in 1485 it was proclaimed, that "King Richard, late reigning mercifully over us, was.... piteously slain and murdered, to the great heaviness of this city".

The Richard III Society was also set up during the 20th century and has gathered considerable research material about his life and reign. Its members hold events and preserve the king's memory. The society's database is impressive and is of great value to the historical research community.

One of the most readable accounts of the evidence on all sides regarding the disappearance of the Princes in the Tower is Josephine Tey's The Daughter of Time, written in 1951 (when some of the sources currently available had not yet been discovered).

Sharon Kay Penman provides a view of the reign of Edward IV and Richard III in The Sunne in Splendor. This book of more than 900 pages gives a detailed account of the Wars of the Roses. However, the author has made additions and minor adjustments to enrich the story.

An award-winning novel published in 2003, The Rose of York: Love & War by Sandra Worth, also presents the account of Richard III from the Ricardian viewpoint. Worth argues that Richard III's contribution to shaping a just society by improvements to the legal system was buried by the Tudors because it conflicted with the image of a villainous and hated monarch that they wished to present in their attempt to minimize hostility towards their regime.

Anne Easter Smith's novel A Rose for the Crown is a reconstruction of the life of the woman who bore his illegitimate children. Historians think this may have been one Katherine Haute, who is mentioned in household records; this book is an attempt to create her story.

The American Branch of the Richard III Society carries out its own review of all the suspects in the case of Richard III, in "Whodunit?" in an online library [2].

A comic "secret history" of Richard III is presented in the British historical sitcomBlackadder. In the series' pilot episode, Richard III (played by Peter Cook) defeats Henry Tudor at Bosworth Field, but is accidentally killed by the bumbling nobleman Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson). His nephew, Richard of Shrewsbury, becomes "King Richard IV" (Brian Blessed). When the entire royal family dies in the series' final episode, Henry Tudor usurps the throne and rewrites history as it is known today.

The fantasy series by George R. R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, takes place in a situation similar to Richard III's reign, but transposes the characters of that time. In this account, the deaths of Richard's nephews are faked. It represents a fantastical but parallel line, with many of the same names and circumstances.